


I Was Bored (I Had Writer's Block)

by malcontent (Whispering_Sumire)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (!!!), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Blanket Permission, Bullied Stiles Stilinski, Bullying, Depression, Driving, Duty, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Family, Feels, Female Stiles Stilinski, Friendship, Guilt, Heartfelt Conversations, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide attempt, Oblivious Derek, Redemption, Scars, Self-Harm, Slice of Life, Slow To Update, Stiles Stilinski has an Eating Disorder, Swimming, The Author Regrets Everything, Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited Love, Water
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:46:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23833327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whispering_Sumire/pseuds/malcontent
Summary: "I think you wouldn't be acting this way if it had been Derek instead of me.""You're right," Stiles says airily, tone laced with steel. "But you and I are nowhere near that fucking close, and I wouldn't feel like a goddamned idiot trustinghimwith my safety."There's a long, drawn-out, considering silence, wherein Peter regards her like a scientist might regard an intriguing specimen, or a snake a challenging meal."You're different," he finally decides. "And I don't mean that shallowly."She rolls her eyes as she turns away from him, toward Talia's office, "It's beentwo years.And, unlike some people, I've changed." She catches his gaze over her shoulder as she turns the corner, a little validated by the slight surprise dancing across his features, and, in a murmur that's more to herself than to him, says, "We're all works in progress, after all."There's a kind of crack in the ice of his irises as his eyes widen, but she leaves entirely before he can reign himself in enough to respond.Let him think on it for awhile, the ass.Forced introspection all around.
Relationships: Derek Hale & Peter Hale, Derek Hale & Stiles Stilinski, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 40
Kudos: 205





	1. Jenny's Guy

**Author's Note:**

> **_Hey! Listen!_** Stiles is in love with Derek for the first few chapters, but I'm not tagging it, because this fic is not and in no way will be Sterek. Stiles and Derek are friends and will remain friends, etc, etc. Also, do not disregard the tags, humans, highschool, female!Stiles, etc, etc.
> 
>  **A/N :** I wrote this a year ago because a) I was bored, b) I was trying to kick my writers' block to the kerb, and c) a friend of mine gave me a really strange challenge and I decided _fuck it, I'm gonna write like I'm still in middle school and I'm not going to be a perfectionist or anything I'm just gonna do it._ I'm cleaning out my WIP folder. I don't know if this will ever be finished but it's not amnesty yet. I haven't edited it as harshly as I normally edit my work and I'm likely not going to. If you decide to read this, more power to you. Love you. Stay safe. Soulhugs.  
> ((Friend: okay, but what if I gave you [an extremely... unique](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6r9qga29VM&list=PL-9I1eM8QHPtW4que-CHs1Ia79mOviXzX) prompt?  
> Me: Uhhhhhh.....))
> 
>  **Blanket Trigger Warning :** Stiles Has an Eating Disorder, and a non-canon Alcoholic Older Brother (Alcohol Abuse). Bullying. Self-Harm.

Stiles finds herself underwater.

She _always_ finds herself underwater, these days. She gives everything over to it: to the aching burn in her muscles and the oxygen-starved high. She is all fluid movement, rippling pitch, tightened lungs. 

She could drown, or swim, and isn't it funny that she only ever really feels _human_ , here?

The scent of chlorine or sea-brine, that's what's become home to her, and she can't breathe easy unless the air is dense with it. Unless she is _lost_ in it.

But she can't always be swimming — life has its responsibilities, after all.

There are vestiges of summer in the way heat pools on the blacktop in front of the highschool. A thrum of fever that gnaws at your nerves and virtues, begs for sweat and rage as it threads red-hot hooks through your skin. _Become like me,_ it hounds relentlessly, _scream your fury, beat it against the sky._ And with that heat comes the echoes of elbows digging, knuckles bruising, words cutting. Reminders of all the surging, swirling, overwhelming hatred that had been poured into her for years, collecting like poisonous sap.

And she'd been incapable of doing anything against the way her very blood fermented, all her sugar curdling into acid.

That poison built and built and built inside of her until all of her belonged to it, _was_ it.

And their ridiculous nickname for her, _Fatty Missy_ , might've been the weapon that actually wounded the worst.

Which doesn't even make any sense to _her_ , and she was the one it was hurting.

But her body is something that she has... issues with. A little bit less so, lately — partly because nearly a years' worth of therapy and forced introspection will do that to you, but mostly because her capacity to _feel_ has dwindled down to a precise, needle-prick point.

An indistinct, white-noise numb thrives within her like wild, invasive ivy: thick in all her fissures and determinedly overtaking all her raw, yawning caverns of empty with its' voracious emotional anaesthetic.

Which is one reason why she barely reacts to the incredulous, caustic reception she receives when her bullies - for lack of a better term - see the physical change that she's undergone. Another is that she's far too focused on utilizing the forty minutes she's got left until homeroom _productively_ to bother giving them the time.

She'd asked Jenny to give her some space after The Situation and she's assuming that Jenny told Derek to back off, too, so she hasn't seen or heard from anyone all summer.

Time away from them has been a study in _harrowing_ , but she's—

Not better. She doesn't know if the given value of _better_ is something she will ever be capable of being, but she's... clear, maybe.

Or something close, anyway.

So, she ignores the cat-calling cunts as she makes her way into the school, through its airy, chemical-shimmer halls, toward her locker. And therefore, thanking whichever school-district deity had smiled upon them enough to assign their lockers side-by-side, toward Jenny.

"Jenny," Stiles grins, the rush of warmth she feels from seeing her best friend just enough to get through her desensitized smoke-screen. "How was Paris? Or did your parents finally give in and vacation in Turkey this year, instead?"

Jenny's eyes cut to her, strangely harsh, and she lets the silence linger until it feels too uncomfortably awkward to maintain.

"Oh-kay... Um. Did they decide not to vacation at all?" Stiles ventures, confused with a steadily increasing side of wary.

"I don't want to talk to you anymore, Stiles," Jenny says crisply, her normally soft loamy eyes gone scathing. She bares her teeth in a mean smile, glossy red lips stark against the brutal-bright of them, as her tone lilts into condescending sing-song, "In fact, I don't think I want to talk to you ever again."

Stiles blinks, thrown, the part of her that's blooming hurt nearly suffocated by the part of her that's sincerely struggling to comprehend what's going on. "Uh," she drags out, "wh-why? I mean, did I do something?" An uncertain laugh escapes her, "Are you joking? Is this a joke? Because I don't get it."

"No. I'm not joking. Look, _Missy-"_ Stiles flinches involuntarily, hating the way her childhood nickname has gotten so warped, how it's been shortened to an insult, how it sounds coming out of the mouth of a person who used to be like a _sister_ to her- "I can't afford to be seen with such a failure of a person anymore. I am finally, _finally_ getting the recognition I deserve, and do you want to know what you are? You're dead-weight, a burden, and I am so fucking tired of having to carry you around. Do you get it now? Have I made myself clear?"

"What the hell," Stiles breathes, her cheeks burning with some twisted, gut-wrenching shame, and though she can hear the hollow thud of her heartbeat in her ears, it feels as if someone has removed the bloodied, useless organ with a rusty butterknife and unsteady hands. Her stomach churns biliously, and her veins feel coated in magma. It's very, very hard to swallow, but she thinks she'd puke otherwise, so she manages. "It's only been _three months_ since we last saw each other, Jenny, what the hell happened to you? What do you mean _recognition?_ From who? And since when do you fucking call me _Missy?"_

She hesitates for a brief moment, eyes stinging, before choking out, "Since when do you think I'm a burden, Jenny? Is that—is that really how you feel about me?"

"It's how I've felt about you from the start," Jenny says, cavalier, folding her arms across her chest and subtly, disdainfully, leaning away from her. "You're a mess, Stiles. You always have been, always will be, and I can't believe I ever let myself stoop low enough to become friends with you. You want to know what happened? I spent three months with _out_ you, and they were the best three months of my life."

Jenny smirks, all smug, vindictive catharsis, and Stiles sucks in a sharp, shaky breath, before catching sight of Derek coming down the hall over Jenny's shoulder and ducking her head with a muttered curse.

Being friends with Derek has always been bittersweet for her, like balancing precariously on a tight-rope between melancholic resignation and heartsoaring, stomach fluttering, head over heels in love — and, honestly, considering how humiliated she feels right now, the low hum of devastation singing through her? She has no fucking clue how to deal with him, on top of everything else.

She wants to go.

She wants to run, and break, and _be_.

Gods, but she wants to swim.

Derek calls out to them in greeting, and Jenny's smirk gets all the wider, something malicious glittering in her loamy eyes as he jogs closer, goofy grin wide and crooked and drenched in so much sunlight it makes Stiles feel a little sick.

"Long time no see, Mischief," Derek says, sugar-crusted chipper. "We missed you this summer."

"We did," Jenny gushes, and something in Stiles knots up as the girl before her flips a switch at the drop of a dime, suddenly familiar again; the kind, affectionate, demure friend replacing the horrible, cruel, calculating stranger. "And!" She starts, terribly cheerful, as she winds her arm around Derek's waist and he wraps his arm around her shoulders — them leaning into each other, snugly, _rightly_ , like the correct puzzle-pieces clicking into place. "We have some really amazing - crazy, but amazing - news," she grins, wide, so wide that Stiles can imagine being swallowed whole without much effort.

Derek's atmospheric eyes eddy with wispy clouds of pleasure, "We've kept it under wraps until now because we wanted you to be the first to know, but," his smile isn't one Stiles thinks she's ever seen before, "we're dating."

Stiles swallows convulsively, breath slowing as that deadened part of her takes over.

 _Oh,_ she thinks, and it comes like a glacier through sludge; enormous, for all that it's slow and steady and frozen over. Then: _Okay._ And, after a small eternity's thought: _He seems happy._

Which is all she's ever wanted for him. 

Some small, selfish part of her wanted them to be happy _together_ , wanted to be the one held so naturally, as if they were a part of each other all along and the universe can breathe a sigh of relief now that they've finally realized it. But she hadn't known - will never know, now - if she'd ever be able to pluck up the courage to confess, to try, or fuck up their relationship _in_ the trying. And she can't say that it was _just_ her cowardice keeping them apart, because there was other shit, too, not to mention the fact that he'd never shown an ounce of romantic interest in her.

Stiles loves him, but it's been a one-sided, heartbreaking affair for a long time, now.

And she loves Jenny—or, she did—does she?

Derek looks happy. _With her,_ Derek looks happy.

Whole.

Beautiful.

She wonders if it's possible to feel a sense of fondness and pride even as your heart disintegrates under the deluge.

"Wow," she breathes, and smiles - because she knows she ought to - wide enough to hurt. Then again, everything hurts, so this pain, too, seems appropriate. "Congratulations. I never would've imagined—. But you two are perfect together, honestly. Um." She sniffles a deep inhale, "I've gotta go."

She needs the water, she needs a place where she can grieve something that was never hers to begin with in peace.

_You're a mess._

Ah, well.

"Really? Already?" Derek wonders, beginning to frown, somewhere between disappointed and concerned.

She nods jerkily and begins to turn away.

"Ah, wait, when you have a minute," Derek rushes out, reaching for her wrist and stuttering to a confused, half hurt halt when she recoils sharply from his touch. "I... Um, do you think we could talk?" His voice goes gentle, head inclining slightly, "Privately?"

Whether she means to or not, Jenny saves her from answering, "Babe, she's really busy right now; just let her go." She tugs Derek back to her side possessively with the same kind of expression one might wear when their dog begins to misbehave. "Ciao, Missy," she dismisses with a determined air - and if Derek, beside her, is surprised to hear the more insulting version of Stiles' nickname, he doesn't show it - "we'll be seeing you."

Stiles doesn't think that last part could've sounded more disingenuous if Jenny tried, and she can't manage anything even resembling a smile when she waves them goodbye in turn.

And as soon as she's out of their line of sight, she _runs_.

* * *

This early - or this late, depending on who you're asking - the school swimming pool is deserted, which is probably the beginning and end of Stiles' good luck for the day.

She dives under, propels herself forward in clumsy, haphazard strokes.

She weeps, and the water washes it away.

She screams, and the water smothers it.

She remembers all these fragmented, sunlit, stained-glass moments: two little girls playing, bursting with laughter and ecstatic enthusiasm for _everything_ , daydreaming about the Hale boys, an uncle and nephew so close in age they may as well be twins.

"I'll marry Peter," Jenny would say, hand rose-petal soft in hers, auburn waves billowing in the glee-swept wind, "and you'll marry Derek, and then we'll be sisters for _real."_

"Peter," Stiles would always repeat, making a face. He, compared to her love - compared to anyone, in fact - was too carefree, indifferent to the point of cruelty, and, just, "I don't think he's good enough for you."

Jenny would raise her chin, haughty and stubborn, "Well, _I_ like him."

"... Okay. but if he's ever mean to you," Stiles would grin, joy erupting within her, "as your sister, I'd definitely have to punch him."

And Jenny would laugh and laugh and laugh until she'd cry.

_Give it to the water._

Whenever Jenny had settled, they'd lace their pinkies together, gazes locked with a surety, an unrelenting knowing, an absolute resolve.

"Sisters," they'd promise.

 _Give it to the water,_ Stiles thinks, lungs screeching for breath, an echo of every other anguish.

She sweeps to the very bottom at the deepest end of the pool, ink blots swirling in her vision, a wave of dizziness crashing dangerously over her.

 _Give it to the water,_ Stiles thinks, and slaps the floor with her hands, flipping toward the surface in one quick motion. She gasps for air, chest heaving, the animal part of her brain that's dedicated to her survival sagging in relief.

_And move on._

* * *

Stiles is as close to tranquil as she guesses she's going to get when Derek finally corners her.

She'd spent every period up to lunch in the pool, and while she wouldn't say she was _actively_ avoiding him, she wasn't particularly inclined toward _not_ avoiding him, either.

His eyebrows furrow as he looks her up and down, "You're... _soaked."_

The corners of her lips twitch up involuntarily. "Thank you, captain obvious."

He rolls his eyes, "I only meant that you look like you got into a fight with a few buckets of water in the _middle of a school day_. You can't blame me for being curious as to _how."_ He flicks a strand of her hair and offers her a vaguely amused, expectant look.

Stiles shrugs, grateful for the chill coating her skin, the breathless rush still tingling in her muscles, the white-noise crackle clogging her mind like cotton. Languidity settles over her, allowing her apprehensiveness to relax into something nearly nonchalant.

"Magic," she deadpans, and Derek snorts.

"Fine, don't tell me." He shifts, the air around them going heavy as he rubs the back of his neck, his sky-song eyes accumulating sombre shadows.

"What's wrong?" Stiles asks, though even the worry welling in her gut feels like it's stifled behind a pane of thick, frosted glass.

Derek hesitates, jaw clenching rhythmically like he's chewing on his thoughts before he tells her, sounding extremely unhappy about it, "Peter's back."

Stiles' eyes go wide. "Oh."

The thing about Peter Hale, is, that he's a bully.

In terms of Stiles, anyway, he was the worst — no one else ever came close to the shit he'd done to her.

He'd pushed her out of a tree once, when they were seven, to the agonizing tune of a broken arm. The nanny watching them had been distraught, and Stiles, because she hadn't wanted busy parents to be called, because she hadn't wanted Derek - who, even scowling that hard, had looked on the verge of tears - to be upset, because she didn't think Peter had meant it to go that far, and because he was as much her friend back then as any of them — Stiles had covered for him. Blamed it on her clumsiness and begged the nanny to just take her to the hospital quietly, everything was fine, she just needed a cast was all.

He'd seemed so... shocked, and upset, then. She'd thought he'd just been playing, that it'd been an accident, and she'd forgiven him easier than breathing, didn't even wait for an apology.

From there it'd only gotten worse, like that first time had been an experiment in honesty and everything after was the reality of it, the ill-disguised truth of him.

'Fatty Missy,' even, had been coined because of some stupid shit he'd pulled, removing the bolts from her chair so it would collapse under her weight.

But for the past two years, he's been gone; sent to military school by his elder sister and brother-in-law - Derek's mom and dad, Peter's guardians - for reasons no one's ever deigned to tell her. She'd always just assumed that the shit he was doing to her, he was doing to other people, too, and he'd finally gotten caught.

A last-ditch effort to redeem a lost-cause, she'd decided, and let it go, believing that she'd never see him again, believing it was over.

"Well, fuck."

Derek's eyes get impossibly darker. "I won't let him near you," he promises, grimly earnest. "You won't have to worry about anything, Stiles, I swear."

Stiles blinks at him, and then, helplessly, bursts out laughing.

"Hey! I'm serious," he tells her fervently, countenance gone a little stormy. "He's family and I—"

"No, Der," she says, smiling. "Thank you, seriously, but no. I can handle it, I can handle _him_ , and you-" she pokes his chest- "have a girlfriend to consider. I'm stronger than I used to be; have a little faith in me," she tilts her head, making silk-wet hair slink into her vision, "alright?"

Derek hesitates, searchingly. "Alright," he agrees at last. "But if he tries anything, tell me. Please."

Stiles rolls her eyes as she shovingly turns Derek around and steers him out of the empty classroom and into the crowded hall, "Yes, yes. I'll report everything to you, captain; on my honour. Come on, we're going to be late."

"Says the one who skipped three periods, already," Derek says laughingly, ducking to the side when she goes to smack him upside the head and weave-sprinting into the horde when she chases after him with curses that steadily bubble into cackles spilling from her lips, their game becoming a race.

When they get in, wind-whipped and flushed with exertion, Jenny's glare is _deadly_ , but Stiles' soul has been emptied and numbed enough today that all that's left to her, now, is a slumberous calm.

Besides, she's already decided to give up on him, despite how, even now, there's an aching longing hastening through every atom of her.

Derek and Stiles are still friends and Jenny...

Jenny needs to get over herself.


	2. Fucking Vampire Stalker Creep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger Warning :** Eating Disorder, Implied/Referenced V*mit-ish & Alcohol Abuse

Stiles stares at the dinner she's made, three plates heaping with food that looks like it's been lifted straight out of some housewives' catalogue. Her lips tilt into a small smile, a pinch of pride chirping to life within her, only to dim into a resigned sigh as her eyes traverse the expanse of the dining room, open to the living room on the left and bordered by the kitchen on the right, everything clean and bright and utterly empty.

She taps her fingertips against the grain of the wood, a little at a loss as to what to do with herself.

Dad's at work, she guesses, and Leo is... probably on a bender. She doesn't want to think about it, honestly.

She returns her attention to the food. After everything that happened today, she doesn't really feel hungry, and skipping _one meal_ won't—

Her phone chimes, interrupting the staring contest she's having with food she fiercely doesn't want to eat. Stiles digs her phone out of her pocket to read a text from Dad asking her if she can find the Brunski file and take it to Talia for him — nevermind the way the crisp-golden, oil-sweating spring rolls and sauce-soaked broccoli seem to be radiating a smug sort of energy at her.

She flips them off on principle as she texts back a teasing agreement, because this isn't the first time (and it probably won't be the last time) her Dad's had to use her as a delivery-girl because he's forgotten some folder or other at home.

Stiles' Dad (the sheriff) and Derek's mom (the mayor) have had a really amazing business relationship ever since she was little. Talia had been much closer to Stiles' Mom, though, before she'd died, and the way that Stiles' Dad had grieved that loss had been ugly enough that it's been a struggle ever since for them to get along outside of work. Stiles doesn't know all of it, but she knows enough to read between the lines and has long since decided to remain a neutral party.

Let the adults handle their own shit, she's got plenty to deal with on her own, and the situation's stable enough that she's pretty sure she won't be forced to pick sides any time soon.

Although, she'll admit, getting stuck in a room with them while they exchange subtle barbs and thinly veiled insults can be more than a little awkward.

Nevertheless, they get the job done, and Stiles, herself, has always - with varying degrees of expertly contrived stealth - butted her nose into said work whenever the opportunity has presented itself. Which, if you had an eye for it - or, at least, the kind of logic that's convoluted and overly invested in loopholes - was often.

Like, for instance, now: all it takes to get photocopies of the file's contents is a little bit of time and a deft hand. She tucks it into her messenger bag when she's done and goes on her merry way.

You'd be surprised how much blackmail material she has on some pretty high up there politicians; how many people in jail - or thankful that they aren't in jail - owe her favours.

* * *

The Hale house - which is two miles into the Preserve and a proverbial castle compared to her paltry, middle-class, suburban home - is just as seemingly rid of human life. Which edges right past strange and veers directly into eery, considering how many people live here, and how there's always at least a handful within, and always, _always_ , at least _one_ person awake.

The pros and cons of having such a big family, Stiles guesses — only, _now_...

Stiles wonders where everyone's gone as she does a cursory walk-through, having unashamedly let herself in with the spare key hidden in the puzzle-box seated beneath the potted cactus outside (whose name, for the record, is Ellen, and that's a hill she's willing to die on). Her calls for Talia, Derek, and/or any other random, lurking family member go unanswered, leaving her to her spiking anxiety and the suspensefully creeping shadows of this too-big, too-quiet mansion.

She ends up in their kitchen, with a sigh cresting inside her lungs and a vague plan to go in search of pen and paper, hoping to leave the folder with a note somewhere Talia will notice, but the rest of the kids won't. Stiles stops by the sink first, cupping her hands under the faucet after she's got the water running cool, and bringing it to her mouth to drink, before rinsing her face and wetting her hair, trying valiantly to soothe her nerves.

The effort is completely undone by a low, amused, venomous-silky voice — whatever it said completely lost to her shocked cry as she spins around, hand over her thundering heart.

"Jesus fucking _christ,_ Peter."

Peter smirks, enjoying himself ruthlessly at her expense, the bastard. "It wasn't my intention to startle you."

"Oh, really? I mean, I've only been searching for any sign of conscious life this place might have to offer for the past ten minutes, and _you've_ only made yourself scarce until the exact moment I was distracted enough that emerging from the shadows like some fucking vampire stalker creep would give me a goddamn _heart attack,_ but it _wasn't your intention to startle me."_

Peter's eyebrows steadily rise throughout her sardonically incredulous tirade, and by the end of it, she feels as if her cheeks have been rubbed raw with hot coals and her tongue's been coated in cinnamon.

Stiles clears her throat, trying to get ahold of herself, but the bubble of irritation in her chest isn't done popping, apparently, because she continues, "You know, my Dad told me that he had it on good authority you were _reformed-"_ he had also implied that he didn't believe that for one second, and could she please tell him if the little sociopath actually did wind up murdering someone? thanks- "but hoping for something like that would be tantamount to asking for a goddamned miracle, wouldn't it?"

"Don't you think you might be overreacting?" Peter wonders as he prowls closer.

She levies a steady look on him, "Am I? Don't you think what you just pulled was childish?" She scoffs a laugh, "Immature? Just a little bit cruel?"

He leans his hip on the counter, arms crossed over his chest, blizzardous eyes narrowed critically. "I think you wouldn't be acting this way if it had been Derek instead of me."

"You're right," she says airily, tone laced with steel. "But you and I are nowhere near that fucking close, and I wouldn't feel like a goddamned idiot trusting _him_ with my safety."

There's a long, drawn-out, considering silence, wherein Peter regards her like a scientist might regard an intriguing specimen, or a snake a challenging meal.

"You're different," he finally decides. "And I don't mean that shallowly."

She rolls her eyes as she turns away from him, toward Talia's office, "It's been _two years._ And, unlike some people, I've changed." She catches his gaze over her shoulder as she turns the corner, a little validated by the slight surprise dancing across his features, and, in a murmur that's more to herself than to him, says, "We're all works in progress, after all."

There's a kind of crack in the ice of his irises as his eyes widen, but she leaves entirely before he can reign himself in enough to respond.

Let him think on it for awhile, the ass.

Forced introspection all around.

* * *

After she's left the folder somewhere suitable enough, for the moment, she goes to leave, pragmatically choosing to ignore the tail she's acquired.

He strides ahead to open the door for her with a flourish and a bow, and she takes the moment to glare at him, suspicion mingling with some odd hints of humour and an even odder surge of curiosity.

Before she has a chance to say _'What the hell do you think you're doing?'_ , or snicker despite herself, or stomp on one of his feet because he probably fucking deserves it, or all of the above - which would be the most satisfying option, in her opinion - Derek comes sprinting up the driveway, still in full basketball regalia, like he's just stepped out of practice and was too lazy to change before heading home.

Which, considering him, is probably an entirely accurate assumption.

The dork.

"Stiles," he says, heavily side-eyeing Peter beside her, "you okay?"

"Fine," she tells him easily as she pads through the doorway, trying to get away from the energy crackling between them — honestly, it's no better than a pair of wolves set to growling at each other.

"Are you sure?" Derek asks, even as he continues to glower at his Uncle.

"Do you find her statement so untrustworthy?" Peter wonders with a slight smirk and a probably-on-purpose irritatingly snide cadence.

Derek offers an eyebrow-hooded scowl that proclaims loudly _exactly_ who he finds untrustworthy in this scenario. Which is, admittedly, fair.

"Boys," she half chides, a little exasperated despite herself. "Will you guys try to kill each other if I leave, or do I legitimately need to call a mediator?"

Peter smiles with an innocence that's so obviously fake she wonders how his face is even capable of pulling it off, "Oh, don't worry, darling, we'll behave."

Derek's black look accumulates a menacing murkiness at the appellation, whereas Stiles only blinks once, slow, and decides to let it go.

"I don't believe you," she says, honestly. "But I'm going home, anyway. Have fun."

Excepting Roscoe - the loveliest and, normally, most loyal, robin's egg blue jeep one could ever own - absolutely refusing to start; stubbornly sitting pretty as you please just as the clouds sulking gloomily across the sky decide to burst into wailing rainfall.

Ten minutes later sees her utterly drenched, futzing under the hood with no small amount of duct-tape, and the same kind of single-minded determination an impatient river might, who, upon having spent geological ages beating the earth into dutiful submission, suddenly finds itself faced with a rather impertinently well-structured dam.

"Um, Stiles?"

"Not now."

Derek fidgets from the safety of the porch, where the rain is pounding a tantruming rhythm against the awning above him. Peter, on the other hand, is situated comfortably on the porch-swing with a book, largely pretending to be ignoring them.

She tsks, mutters a few curses, tries cooing a bribe just to see if Roscoe will take the bait. He doesn't. He knows an empty promise when he hears one.

After another handful of minutes, Derek sighs, cranky and impatient, "Stiles, you're gonna get sick. Just come inside, warm up, and if the rain doesn't let up by the time Mom gets home she can give you a ride."

"Or I could give you one," Peter offers glibly.

 _"Peter—"_ Derek snaps, and Stiles firmly tunes them out in order to focus.

She struggles with her jeep valiantly for a while longer before finally accepting that it's just not going to work out tonight. She hopes that Roscoe'll be more reasonable tomorrow, because it would seriously cut into their funds if he needed to be towed to the shop, and she has no doubt that the douchebag mechanic will overcharge her (again) on whatever might 'need to be repaired'.

She closes the hood and spares a glance for their fighting. Peter is smiling mordantly as he throws any number of cutting sarcastic remarks, and Derek is steadily leaning into communicating solely via body language, boiled down to desert-dry humour infused with sheer frustration. Stiles wonders if Derek realizes that he wouldn't be capable of, let alone comfortable with, doing that with anyone else: being so purely _himself_ in a way he doesn't normally allow.

They really are like brothers, she thinks, and is surprised to feel more fond amusement than anything else for it, despite how something thorny and poisonous for Peter still snakes its way around her heart.

They're also idiots, she decides, as she slips away, their focus too heavy and irate on each other to notice.

Stiles waits until she's halfway home to text them both that she can take care of herself, and she's glad they're getting along so well, she'll see them tomorrow.

Besides, water has only ever been good for her, and the way it falls in dense droplets against her skin makes her feel _clean_. Better. She's glad for it, truly, and for the fresh air.

"A blessing in disguise," she mutters to herself, skipping an empty soda can through the muddied puddles on the road.

* * *

Leo's passed out on the couch when she gets home, Dad's still at work, and the food on the table hasn't been touched. She sighs, makes sure Leo's resting on his side, and sets about putting the leftovers in the fridge, tidying up.

Her elder brother smells like alcohol, cigarettes, and motor oil, and she mutters her complaints as she returns to him with a cup of water and some aspirin, setting them on the coffee table for him for later. 

The rain didn't take it easy on him, either; he's soaked through, and she's going to have to clean the couch tomorrow so it doesn't end up smelling like wet fucking dog, but at least he's home, at least he's safe.

She wrangles his boots off of his feet, letting them fall to the hardwood floor with a clattering clunk, and perches on the table, elbows resting on her knees, chin cradled in her hands, watching over him with a trashcan between them, in case puking happens.

"Today's been really fucking strange," she tells him, an odd sense of melancholic nostalgia sweeping through her. "People who I expected to be kind were assholes, and the people I expected to be assholes were... less asshole-ish? than I thought they would be."

Leo makes an ominous noise in the back of his throat and she waits it out, tense, prepared to help him through being sick if it comes to that. But it doesn't; he looks pretty green around the gills, but he settles, and she exhales slowly.

"I told Peter off. You might've gotten a kick out of that, if you were awake... Or sober." Despite how silly she feels for _what_ she told him off for.

Still, it could've been worse. It _has_ been worse, and she'd been impatient to stand up for herself, old resentments gnawing at her.

Stiles' eyes drift to the window, the sleet of water stomping its' way to the ground, demanding to be heard, noticed, felt. Selfishly, righteously.

For one desperate, heartwrenching moment, she lets herself grieve, for her relationship with Jenny, for losing Derek, for how she misses her father and her brother, for how she constantly feels like everything is spiralling out of her control. She closes her eyes as the tears fall, heavy and slow, down her feverishly warm cheeks, and lets the dull ache of anguish take over.

A small, fragmented, discordant part of her whispers that it's not enough, that she's too full, that there's more inside that needs _out_.

"Fuck," she chuckles, wet and self-deprecating, "I am. I'm such a fucking mess."

"Stiles?" Leo slurs blearily, squinting up at her, and she jumps to attention, roughly scrubbing away the evidence.

"Yeah," she says with a deep, sniffling inhale. "Yeah, I'm here."


	3. The Beach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Trigger Warning :** Implied/Referenced Suicide Attempt & Self-Harm
> 
> Hope you guys are staying safe; thanks for reading, and I love all your faces

Stiles opens the door fully expecting it to either be Miss Walters - one of the many old ladies that she strongly suspects of being Dad's spies, who're always coming over with baked goods, gossip, and cheek-pinch-happy fingers - or someone from the Club to fetch her still dozing brother.

It's neither.

"I come bearing gifts," Peter says smoothly, lifting up the box of cupcakes in his hands enticingly. They're from Honey's Cafe, which used to be her favourite, and are the kind of high-quality that demands more money because they actually deserve it.

She eyes him suspiciously. "Why?"

 _"Must_ I have an ulterior motive?" he asks, innocence all wound in gossamer.

She scoffs, incredulous, "For as long as I've known you, Peter Hale."

His eyes dim momentarily, shaded snowmelt clinging to the refrain of a cold, brusque winter, and lowers the box with a slight frown. "I wanted to apologize for last night," he tells her, "and I thought you might like a ride."

She regards him for a long moment, lips pressed together, the heat of the new day already pressing in on them, abrasive. Dullness tingles through her, like her soul's been saddled with shitty circulation, and it's making everything seem strangely frail, brittle. Some distant part of her blooms with ire, the roots of which bid a nauseating bitterness to bubble in the back of her throat.

"Better be a damn good apology, dude," she finally relents - moving aside by way of inviting him in - because forgiving Peter Hale was already a bad habit by the time she was five, and, since how unhealthy that is isn't lost on her in the slightest: "considering you're completely glazing over all the other awful shit you've put me through."

She doesn't touch the box of cupcakes, and she doesn't let her guard down for a second, keeping him in her peripheral even as she finishes cooking the breakfast she'd been making before his knocking had interrupted her.

"I'm sorry for that, too," he says lightly. "Despite whatever apparent evidence there may be to the contrary, I _have_ grown up over these past two years." She casts a disbelieving glance his way, and he narrows his eyes, a flash of irritation stirring up the snow in them. "Last night was a mistake on my part. A joke made in bad taste on account of our history. But I'd meant to—" he groans a soft sigh of aggravation through his teeth. "I had every intention of reconciling with you when I returned home."

"Reconciling?" Stiles asks, highly dubious, leaning her palms on the island-bar between them and cocking her head to the side. "What, you wanna be friends? _You?"_

He gentles the cupcakes onto the bar counter, all polite, well-retained composure, an absolute calm that makes her want to sharpen her nails just so she can dig them into every crack and bear down until he shatters completely. There isn't even any anger behind that sentiment, it's just compulsive, like chewing obsessively at the end of a pen until the tinny taste of ink bursts, gamy, on her tongue.

"Yes," he says simply, quietly sincere.

"You made my life hell, Peter. If you want that, if you _really_ want that? You're going to have to earn it."

The corners of his mouth twitch up: something not-quite a smile, but more honest than most expressions she's seen him wear, like a secret shared — it kind of freaks her out. "I plan to."

* * *

The two of them, the type of people that they are, they'd never really be capable of resorting to small talk — but this? Having a mildly philosophical discussion about the politics that come with being in a private school mainly attended by privileged students determined to socialize for the sake of good publicity more than anything else, half the time in their parent's name over their own? This is probably as close as they're ever going to get.

At least it's pretty civil.

Really fucking weird - and Stiles is antsy as all hell - but civil.

Leo wakes up eventually, and shuffles over to consume some breakfast alongside Peter - who had praised her culinary skills with a genuinely pleased air that'd been so wrapped up in politeness it'd set her teeth on edge - acting the complete zombie until he's managed to scarf down 3.5 plates and as many cups of coffee.

Peter raises a judgemental eyebrow, probably at the lack of decorum, "Is he always like this?"

Leo grunts, and Stiles says, "You know, for a bully, you're such a fucking prude," but there isn't much heat to it.

"Manners maketh man," he returns innocently, even as his eyes sparkle.

She'll say it again, _really fucking weird._

"No," she bites, "morals do."

He seems to retreat somewhat at that, humming a vague concession.

"Kids," Leo says, voice gritty and low, as he twirls his finger in the air to encompass the both of them. "Loud. Headache. Hush."

Stiles grins impishly and reaches over the counter to muss his shoulder-length, dyed-out, smokey blue tangles, before roughly tugging him in so she can smack an obnoxiously loud, wet kiss on his forehead.

"Ow," he whimpers pathetically, and she laughs at him.

"Oh, c'mon. Little sisters are a well-known hangover cure."

"Ngh," he responds, and slumps onto the counter when she clears his plate away, cheek pillowed on his arms, silty eyes finally taking in their guest. "Peter? The fuck are you doin' here? Thought they shipped you out?"

Peter smiles mirthlessly, "Yes, well. They shipped me back."

"Mischief," Leo says around a jaw-creaking yawn, "want me to kick his ass for you?"

Peter gazes at her, open and accepting in a solemn way that she's honestly struggling to wrap her head around.

"Don't know yet," she decides, after thinking it over for a moment, and Peter's whole demeanour seems to, oddly enough, soften. "I'll get back to you on that."

"You know I'm good for it," Leo mumbles, and she tugs on a lock of hair to keep him from passing back out, shoving coffee at him with a friendly reminder that if his brothers come 'round to pick him up because he's late and leave mud on her floors again, she'll sell his bike to fucking charity.

Leo whines, and Peter chuckles at them, his eyes gone all spring rain, babbling brook, the ice in them mysteriously melted.

* * *

The thing about Stiles is that she's, in a word, terrifying.

The only time that she'd ever gotten really, truly angry with Peter when they were younger, it had been because he'd said something absentmindedly harsh to Jennifer. She'd utilized every secret she'd known about him, every relationship he had, twisted every single truth at her disposal - he'd thought himself clever, his secrets well-hidden; not, he'd learned, in the face of her fury - and dedicated herself to making his luck volatile and his charm inhospitable. It had lasted only a week, but in the end, she'd gone above and beyond proving her point.

Somehow, her loyalty, that which had allowed him to act so cruelly toward her without consequence, that which might've once protected him in the same way, had been turned against him.

He was always pushing her, testing every boundary, to see how far she'd let him go, how much she'd take and forgive, compulsively, recklessly, _childishly_. There was something about how unconditional and absolute it was that made him _need_ to test it, because he craved it, because he couldn't trust it, because it _scared_ him. Immaturity, impulsivity, and brash impetuousness kept him scratching that itch to blood; to deep, oozing gashes, to something concave and void and too tormented to be anything but grotesque.

Her loyalty was never something quantifiable, exactly, but it was still something he'd squandered, foolishly. And in satisfying his own needs, his insatiable curiosity, his fetid doubt, he'd hurt her. Over and over again, he'd hurt her.

In part, because he'd wanted her to _fight back_.

It's not something he's proud of.

He's not the best person - how he'd treated her probably one of the best testaments to that fact - but of all the things he might've done, this is what he regrets most.

And even that, is selfish.

He glances over to see her, curled up in the passenger's seat, luxurious russet curls waterfalling over her shoulders, desert sunset eyes trained on the road ahead, all of her too withdrawn, too contained.

He knows she's changed in the time he was gone, but the way she lapses into stoic silence like this worries him, genuinely. (And how much of it, he has to wonder, is his own fault?)

"Are you alright?" he asks softly, knowing he'd rather have biting, acerbic banter mingled with resentment than nothing at all.

"Fine," she replies faintly, curling into herself tighter, hugging her legs to her chest and resting her cheek on her knees with her face turned toward him, keen gaze watchful. "You didn't used to be the type of person to ask shit like that."

He takes the moment at a red-light to meet her eyes. "I know."

"What the hell did they do to you at that military school? Was brainwashing involved?"

He huffs something like a laugh, shaking his head, "No. But I met some people who were... similar, to myself. And I had some time to think things over."

Stiles hums, still staring at him; like she's searching for something, for the tell, for the moment this all proves to be a lie. He doesn't blame her, nor does he begrudge her the scrutiny, the suspicion.

Still, there's something... _off._ An instinct in him he doesn't totally understand flaring to life as he continues to drive, an uneasy tension that increases the closer they get to school, it's in how her eyebrows furrow slightly, how her body coils, how she retreats ever further into herself, worryingly subdued.

"We could skip," he suggests, finally, and her attention snaps to him, as hyper-focused and intent as a feral kitten suddenly offered cat-nip is. He fights not to smile outright at the reaction, the glint in her eyes sharp, a little wild, and much more alive than anything he's seen in her since their reunion. "If you'd like?"

"It's your first day back," she reminds him, with no small amount of wariness in her quiet, distant tone. "Talia will be pissed if you just ditch. And you're one of the very few people I know who actually _likes_ school. Not for the reasons normal people do, but still." She slips an arm from around her knees to hook wayward locks of hair behind her ear, frowning mildly. "What're you up to?"

"Nothing, Stiles," he tells her sincerely, patiently. "You looked stressed, and I thought you could use a break. That's all."

"You'd be willing to risk the Hale matriarch's wrath for that? Really?" Stiles raises her eyebrows sceptically. "And what the hell do you get out of it?"

Hushed, honest in a way he doesn't really like to be, and almost without entirely meaning to, he murmurs, "I get to spend time with you."

Stiles _flinches_.

Peter inhales deeply, exhales slow, and reminds himself that this was never going to be an easy endeavour. He has no right to push, and she is allowed to feel, react, however she needs to. He can hope, that she may forgive him, that they might be friends again, maybe even—

But beyond that? He'll accept it, the end of this, whatever that end may be.

It's up to her.

"Water," she whispers, and he blinks at her. She's turned back to the road, the expression half-hidden by her hair completely implacable, but some of the tension shrouding her seems to have eased. "Take me to the water."

He watches her for a moment, ponderous, before he says, light, gentle, "Okay," and makes the turn that will head them in the direction of the beach.

* * *

There is a long slab of rock that leads out into the water, like some crumbling, antediluvian boardwalk built by long-dead giants.

Stiles is standing at its edge, where it plateaus, a sliver of stark moonlight cut through by the crisp black of her underwear, her thick brown curls playing obscure games in the air currents. Peter watches her from a small distance, his shoes dangling from his hooked fingers, her clothes in the backpack slung over his arm — she'd stripped almost as soon as her feet had hit the sand, shoved all her clothes into his arms, and then climbed up here. 

He can't help but hold his breath as she leaps into the crashing waves below.

But she meets the water like she was _born_ to it. Her body spills into the sea and curves with the waves and flows with the tides. The water does not swallow her, cannot, because she is already a part of it. She is wild and free and alien.

Peter, mouth dry, swallows.

He finds a bare, out of the way stretch of stone to set their things upon and tugs his own shirt off to join her.

The water is freezing, a sharp shock against his sun-warmed skin that might've been a relief if, perhaps, it weren't just the opposite of two extremes. He comes up with a teeth-chattering curse — and there's Stiles, despite how he's almost certain she'd been nearly half a mile away when he dove. 

Her sand-swept eyes glitter mercilessly, "Cold?"

_"Yes."_

Her whole face blooms when she laughs, brightens, colours the world something richer, kinder.

"Race me," she says, and her grin is almost savage. "It'll warm you up."

She slinks under the dazzling azure and is already three feet away by the time Peter regains his wits enough to follow. She is fast and sure and must, he decides, have the blood of mermaids flowing through her veins.

She takes him out to the buoys, and by the time he reaches her side he feels like all of his muscles would very much like to vacate his employ. "Swimming with you," he says, "is hazardous to one's health."

"You were in _military school,"_ she says exasperatedly, "I can't believe you're this out of shape, dude."

"I am in perfect shape," he returns in a tone that would be smooth if he weren't still trying to catch his breath, "when I am _above ground."_

Stiles folds her arms over the platform of the buoy, her hair sticking in rivulets to her skin, and considers him with a faraway expression. "I won," she says.

"Yes," he agrees.

She smiles, wry and a little brittle, "You know, I think this is the first time I've ever won against you in anything."

"Is it?" Peter wonders as lightly as he can. The sentiment feels patently untrue, ridiculous.

But for as long as they've been in school together Peter's always been at the top of the class, with Stiles directly under him vying for the same spot. In any competition that they both entered, no matter how trivial, Peter was always the one to win first place. When they were much younger, and hide and seek had been their favourite pastime, Peter had always been the one to find her, even after Derek and Jenny had spent hours being utterly bewildered by how perfectly she'd vanished.

Stiles shrugs eloquently and flips back into the water, kicking off the buoy to swim deeper. 

Peter exhales slowly and levers himself up onto the buoy to rest for a moment before he heads back to shore, buying a cheap towel from a grandmotherly, beet-faced vendor and setting it out next to their things.

Stiles swims for hours, and when she returns to him she looks — not happier, necessarily. Calmer, maybe. More at ease in her own skin.

She flops gracelessly down next to him on the towel and drapes an arm over her eyes to shield them from the sun. It's then that he sees them: two lines of scar-tissue following their respective veins, pinkish ridges carving through a jungle of crisscrossing silver.

Peter genuinely struggles to breathe for a moment.

No, he thinks, semi-frantically. _No._

"Stiles," he says, shaken.

She lifts her arm to squint up at him questioningly, seems to realize where his gaze has settled, and sighs. "You wanna know something hilarious?"

Peter swallows, can't seem to summon up another word to dance across his tongue. Stiles doesn't need him to, she answers without his input:

"My therapist's last name is _Bubbles._ Seriously. Bubbles. I'd look through her records to see if she's fucking with me but I have a feeling she'd just find out and spend a week trying to get me to talk about my _trust issues."_

Peter huffs and blinks away the sting in his eyes; the guilt swarming behind his breastbone congeals into something dense and thorny, gouges into the depths of his soul and sticks there like a forever-thing. He clears his throat softly, "Might I remind you that _my_ last name is Hale?"

"Hale is still better than Bubbles," Stiles informs him, sitting up. The deserts in her eyes consume him. She knocks the back of her knuckles against his chest, twice. Smiles, thin and half lost already. "Hale and hearty, right?"

Peter smiles back, achingly, "If you say so, darling."

She hums non-committally, stretches up, shakes out her hair with her hands until it's an ungodly mess and rummages through his backpack for her clothes. Long, flowy, side-slit black pants and a loose black button-up with sleeves that hang over her wrists. Peter wonders how many people know about her scars — if _Derek_ knows.

"We should head back," she says. "Talia might want to kill you less if you don't skip _all_ of your classes."

He raises an eyebrow, "Are we thinking of the same Talia?"

Stiles considers him. "Yeah, no. She's gonna flay you alive no matter what you do, champ."

"Precisely."

Stiles shakes her head with a fleeting chuckle. They gather up the rest of their things and make their way back to the car, anyway, Stiles complaining of sunburn and Peter telling her red is a good colour on her. She shoves him, hard, and only laughs when the act makes _her_ nearly trip and fall instead of him.

"Above ground," he reminds her loftily, her laughter still ringing warmly in his chest.

"Ah," she says with a kind of fatalistic cheer. "Fuck you."


	4. An Afternoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short & sweet, love all you lot, stay safe, soulhugs
> 
>  **Trigger Warning :** Implied/Referenced Self Harm, Scars, etc.

Stiles and Peter are late to the second-to-last class of the day, together.

This raises a few eyebrows, because of course it does.

When Stiles takes the empty seat next to Derek he's side-eyeing her pretty hard. A glare that she knows him well enough to interpret as mostly meaning: _what the earthly fuck, Stiles?_ He's somewhere between worried for her, wanting to commit avunculicide, and utterly confused.

Stiles waves a subtle hand at Ms. Tanner, whom their entrance had interrupted, and mouths, "Later."

Derek's eyes flit to Peter, who'd taken the last seat in the back. Peter crosses one leg over the other, rests his chin in his hand, and grins like the mischievous little shit that he is. Derek bears his teeth like he wouldn't mind an excuse to rip Peter's goddamn throat out.

Stiles snorts.

Peter's gaze catches on her and all of his sharp edges immediately soften.

Derek falters — if only slightly.

Ms. Tanner recaptures her class' attention with a whip-snap tone and an even snappier expression.

* * *

"You're giving him a second chance?" Derek asks her, all incredulity, when she explains her morning to him. Peter's departed for his next class, on the other side of the school from theirs, and Derek's pulled her aside.

They're going to be late, probably.

"No," Stiles says. "He had his second chance when we were kids. And his third. And his fourth. And his—"

_"Stiles."_

"He apologized, okay?" She sighs, runs her fingers through her hair. It's still wet, wind-swept and sand dusted. Her skin is stained with that sea-brine perfume, a peculiar comfort. "We've known each other since we were five years old and he has _never_ apologized to me before."

There's more to it than that. But she doesn't think she could put it into words if she tried.

Derek's mouth quirks, he shifts from one foot to another. Quietly, he says, "That might not mean anything. You know how he is, Stiles. It might just be..."

A trick. A game. The groundwork for something worse.

Just because it didn't _feel_ like a lie doesn't mean it was the truth.

"I know," she says. Shrugs. "We'll see."

"Stiles—"

"Derek." She pins him with a look that brooks no argument. "We'll see."

Derek grimaces, but Stiles ignores any further protests in favour of lugging him down the hall. The bell still rings before they get there.

Jenny is in this class with them. Her eyes, when she sees them together, make Stiles' stomach churn. Her sickly sweet smile is nearly feral.

Stiles takes a deep breath, sits in her assigned seat, and lets her emotions calcify somewhere deep and dark and out of reach.

Insulated.

Safe.

* * *

Peter finds Stiles in the school swimming pool maybe fifteen minutes after school lets out.

The swim team is there, and Stiles is so lazily taking part in their activities that it takes him long seconds to figure out that she's a part of them at all. She doesn't swim fast, here, where it might be prudent. She is all breast-stroke, slow and languid and detachedly amused at the swim coach, Finstock, and the swim team manager, Greenberg's, antics.

Peter lingers in a corner, cheap chain-link fence biting into the sharp angle of a heat-bathed wall. There are chips in the half-heartedly beige plaster and the sun's glaring off of the windows, the water, the metal. Bare feet slap wetly across cracked concrete, turning the pale grey ground into something sleek-black, glittering. 

Some people watch him out of the corners of their eyes, titter at each other behind their hands, but he goes mostly ignored.

He watches Stiles, and the people surrounding her. Nobody talks to her or looks at her too closely except for Finstock, who offers everyone equal amounts of his particular brand of manic enthusiasm. He's screaming about the Olympics and grey hairs and blowing on his whistle and Peter can't see how any of it is productive but it _is_ genuinely fascinating.

An hour passes and the swim team begins picking up and heading inside, girls and boys all chattering as they towel themselves off while Finstock cries in the background: "March, march, march! You better wash that towel when you're done with it, Sabrina! Nobody wants to dry off with your discount hair-dye!"

Stiles is still swimming.

Greenberg tosses her the keys and says, "Don't forget to lock up," before sprinting after the rest.

Peter waits until he can no longer hear clattering and hollering from the locker rooms before he moves closer to sit at the edge of the pool.

"Aren't you tired?" he wonders, curious.

Her monotonous, drawling laps never falter. "Nope."

"Hmm."

He does what meagre homework he has for only attending two classes, then reads ahead until dusk begins to creep across the horizon on tip-toe.

"Talia's going to burn you alive," Stiles muses as she climbs out of the water.

"Of that, I have absolutely no doubt," Peter says, snapping his book promptly shut. He's kept his phone off for precisely that reason.

"You could've gone home, you know," she says, standing over him. Her eyes are shadowed, the kind of deserts people get lost in, die in, haunt senselessly.

He rises to meet her gaze squarely, lips tilting up, "I'm your ride."

Stiles considers him. He feels as if she's scraping away all his skin and meat and bones to discover whatever the core of him might be. She sighs, "Dumbass."

He shrugs, "At least I'm pretty."

She snorts, rolls her eyes, and turns on her heel.

He follows her.

She doesn't bother changing, simply gathers what she needs and goes with him to the car. She's dripping chlorine and ruining his leather seats but the drive feels sticky sweet, full of sleepy conversation about Finstock and Mr. Harris and how Stiles _still_ writes in the margins of her textbooks. In pen.

"Hey," she says when Peter's smoothly parked his car outside of her house. "I don't trust you as far as I can throw you, but... today wasn't awful."

"High praise," Peter drawls, tone ricocheting past sarcasm into something close to sincerity.

"You bet your pretty ass it is," Stiles says, but her shoulders and her mouth are soft. Peter, involuntarily, smiles. Stiles' sand-drowned eyes pluck the stars from the sky and bury them beneath golden grain. "See you tomorrow."

"If my sister lets me live 'till morning," Peter sighs, all melodrama.

"Chin up, champ," Stiles laughs, and sweeps out of his car like a spring breeze.

Peter tries not to think about the compression sleeves she's wearing, or the quiet that saturates her unless he pushes, or the way he would burn the world to keep her smiling, laughing, like that.


	5. Cruelty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I~ have no clue~ what I'm doing~
> 
> This chapter is a thing. Have it. Love all, hope you're staying safe, xoxoxo
> 
>  **Trigger Warnings :** Allusions to Abusive Parents, Allusions to Dead Parents, Bullying, Harsh/Degrading Insults, Threats of Violence???, !!Eating Disordered Thoughts!!

Peter knocks, first. For a time. And then he texts. When he receives no answer from either avenue he lightly checks the door handle, just to see. Unlocked. 

Sighing and crossing his fingers that this won't lose him whatever trust he'd managed to gain yesterday, Peter strides into the Stilinski abode.

Stiles is sitting in the dining room, papers and books strewn out across the table, a laptop at her elbow, and a pen in hand. She's wearing red plaid flannel pyjamas, crisp and stark against her fair skin; she's got her russet curls drawn up in a messy ponytail and her attention is completely tunnelled on her work. Peter tries calling her name, to no avail.

Over half of the books aren't in English and where she's not writing... college essays? she's writing in code.

"Stiles," Peter says again, vacillating between amused and bemused, as he touches her shoulder.

She flinches back to awareness and stares blankly at him for a full ten seconds before seeming to process the fact that he's actually _there._ "Peter?" she says, face furrowing. Then, "Oh, shit, school." She flies out of the room and clatters up the stairs, hollering down, "Gimme a minute!"

Several more curses and quite a few thuds later she's tumbling back into the dining room. She looks like she's taken a quick shower and changed clothes, or else she looks like she's endured a rainstorm with a side of heavy winds. She hastens to collect most of the things on the table into her backpack, puts one of the books under a leg of the table and three others into a shelf in the living room before locking her laptop and closing it.

At last, the whirlwind comes to an end. Directly in front of him. With, somehow, a piece of jam-smeared toast in her mouth. "Are we going?" she says, impatiently, as if she hadn't been the one delaying them.

Peter bites his lips against the laughter that threatens to spill out. "Yes," he says, when he believes he can manage it, "I should think so."

* * *

This is the third time she's gotten into his car soaking wet. _Italian leather seats,_ part of him despairs. But he can get them cleaned and restored if needs must. He really ought to invest in waterproof seat-covers, at this rate.

"How bad was it?"

Peter looks askance at her as he pulls out of the Stilinski's driveway. "How bad was what, darling?"

"The reaming you got from Talia," Stiles says, eyes glittering. She is as she was yesterday, with her legs pulled into her chest and her cheek pillowed on her knees as she watches him. Her backpack is in the footwell, and she's slowly nibbling away at her piece of toast.

"Horrid," Peter admits with feeling. 

His elder sister had been utterly incensed to discover that he'd missed nearly all of his classes on the first day of school. At the end of the lecture, though, she had sat next to him on his bed, pressed in close. Hushed, she had told him that she could understand how returning to all of this after two whole years away might be hard, how she could understand him falling to the instincts of a rebellious teenager but she needed, _needed_ him to do better.

"I spent the day with Stiles," he had told her, discomfited. He honestly hadn't meant to disappoint her so thoroughly. "I needed—. I want to make it up to her."

"Oh," Talia had said. "And did she—was she alright with that?"

"Yes," he'd said. Talia had remained quiet. "Tal... do you think I'm like Dad?"

Talia had sucked in a harsh breath, _"No,"_ she'd said, firm, half-horrified, and she'd tackled him into a hug that'd left them both in a sprawl of tangled limbs on the bed. "Never, you idiot."

"But—"

"No."

"I—"

"Nope."

 _"Talia,"_ he'd huffed exasperated. Then, softer, "I was awful to her."

"You were a kid," Talia had defended immediately.

"That is no excuse," he'd said, relaxing into the blankets, into his sister's arms, as he grimaced up at the ceiling. "You, of all people, should know that." Left unsaid: _you're the one who chose to send me away when it got bad enough that you felt you had cause to be **scared.**_

"And you're still a kid," Talia had murmured, bracing the hard bone of her jaw against his chest. She'd reached up and pinched his cheek. Peter had made a noise of complaint but had otherwise made no move to stop her. "You'll probably always be a kid to me."

"Ugh."

She'd snorted, sighed, lifted herself up to lean over him with hands flat on either side of his head, arms boxing him in. Her long, dark hair spilling a curtain around them. Her eyes, fresh-shredded oregano and splinters of rosewood, piercing him. "Peter," she'd said.

"Talia," he'd returned.

She'd smiled slightly. "Give yourself time," she'd said, with entirely too much faith.

Stiles must see something in his expression, because she accuses, not unkindly, "Liar."

"Only when the need calls for it," Peter says. "And it _was_ horrid. She tickled me when she was done laying down the law, Stiles. For an _hour."_

"Honest to God?" Stiles asks, eyes mocking-wide. She begins giggling into her knees before he can answer.

"I'm glad you find my pain so entertaining," he drawls, but there's a contentedness rolling through him like a sweet-scented breeze. He likes her so much better laughing and happy. 

He wishes he'd realized that sooner.

He wishes—

But no amount of regret will change the choices he's made in the past. All he can do now is move forward. Atone.

* * *

Luckily, they're not late at all — the teacher isn't even there when they get in. Stiles points to the seat next to hers in the back of the class as being the last unassigned seat available, and she and Peter move to sit.

As soon as Stiles' body slides into her chair, however, the plastic and metal gives under her weight. Just falls apart.

Stiles' ass thuds harshly onto the floor and she stares numbly at the mess clattering around her. _Huh._

This is not the first time this particular prank has been pulled on her. She vividly remembers when _Mischief_ had been traded for _Fatty Missy_ until she'd gotten fed up (and her mother had died) and she'd decided to go by _Stiles_ instead. Peter had been the perpetrator that time, and her eyes drift to him almost involuntarily.

He looks — sick.

Stiles _feels_ sick. Her stomach is churning. Part of her brain is wailing that this is her fault, she ate _115_ calories for breakfast, what is _wrong_ with her?

White-noise begins folding over most other avenues of thought but she forces herself to — listen. Clinically. Information comes to her piecemeal past the tingle of dim shock. A fourth of the class is incredulous on her behalf and irritated at this shitty school with its' shitty, cheap furniture and its' shitty, late teachers and its' goddamn shitty curriculum. A few are laughing, that startled, _did that seriously just happen?_ sort of laugh. The rest are just — making fun of her.

A hot coal of shame ignites in the back of her throat, burning it to cinders.

Her gaze skates to the one making the cruellest jokes, the one saying, "That fucking slut," as her friends titter about how it, "serves her right." Jenny.

Peter has gotten up, now, and is hovering like he wants to help but is half-afraid to touch her.

Stiles stands on shaky legs and stalks over to Jenny and her vicious little circle. She takes what feels like a wild guess - this girl was once like a _sister_ to her - but after everything is only the natural conclusion, "Did you take the bolts out of my chair?"

Peter, who had followed a step behind, goes eerily still.

"Maybe," Jenny sneers. "Or maybe you're such a goddamn whale that—"

"I would suggest," Peter says, like the needle-sharp fangs of a rearing snake, so full of venom, poised to bite, "you don't finish that sentence."

Jenny's mouth clicks shut and her face goes blank.

Stiles wonders, "What on earth is wrong with you? We used to be all but sisters, Jenny, what _happened?"_ Because she still doesn't understand. She doesn't think she'll ever understand.

"We were never anything," Jenny says, icy. She smirks, "Look at you; pathetic, hiding behind the boy you used to pretend bullied you. So quick to trade one love in for another. Does he know he's your rebound?"

Stiles narrows her eyes, mind connecting dots that double-dog dare themselves off her tongue before she can resolve herself to stop them, "Is that what's bothering you? That Peter's been, what, driving me to school?"

Jenny scoffs. _"Just_ driving you to school? Really? You're going to play that game with me? When it's so obvious that you've been manipulating him into following you around town like a stray puppy dog?" Her eyes wander down Stiles' person in a grossly perverse manner, the implication being that the only thing she could've possibly manipulated him _with_ is nestled lasciviously between her legs.

"Dude," Stiles says, at the same time Peter says: "Jennifer."

"He's right here," Stiles says, flailing for emphasis, while Peter says: "I should like to remind you that I am present and fully cognizant of my own actions. I assure you, if I have been following Stiles around town like a stray puppy dog, it is entirely of my own free will."

Stiles' eye twitches. She swats Peter's stomach. He smiles winningly at her, then turns his regard on Jennifer, all kindness swept away by ferocity. "And you really shouldn't so carelessly insult my dear friend while you're sitting on an open window-sill. We are three stories up, after all. It would be an awful tragedy if some accident were to befall you."

Jenny — starts _crying?_ Why?

"Peter," Derek snarls out of nowhere, full of outrage. And, oh, that's why. "Don't fucking— _threaten,"_ he puts himself between Jennifer and Peter. Tries to put himself between _Stiles_ and Peter, but Stiles is not getting any closer to Jenny than she has to right now. "My girlfriend."

"I feel like I'm in a soap opera," Stiles breathes, feeling vaguely like her soul is being vacuumed out of her skin through a coke straw. She wants to—go to the bathroom and stick her fingers down her throat. But that is a bad idea.

She opts for texting her therapist while Derek and Peter posture at each other instead. She opens the app she has linked into the school's security camera feed in the background, planning on warning them when the teacher gets near.

Where, she wonders absently, is she going to sit?

She barely catches Jenny telling Derek that Peter not only took the bolts out of Stiles' chair himself, but _hit_ Jenny when she'd tried to protect her.

"Wow," Stiles says, wide-eyed, _"that's_ a lie."

But all of Jenny's fucking friends are corroborating her story and fake-crying with her and Derek is looking at Stiles with the kind of murderously constipated face that says he doesn't know what to do because two years ago, Jenny's story would've been... believable. Beyond believable.

Peter's eyes are dull, the line of his shoulders low, and Stiles realizes with a dizzy jolt that he's done trying to defend himself.

"Peter," she says, airy and half-lost, "help me find another chair? I know," and her voice goes harder, more purposeful, "that _this_ isn't on you. But I think second-grade you might owe me one, huh?"

Peter's staring at her. Like he can't believe she even exists. "Of course, darling," he says, soft and careful.

Stiles flicks a look at Derek. She hopes he understands that she'd never willingly be alone with a boy who'd just hit another girl right in front of her face.

Her heart breaks a little (more, again) at the doubt she finds there.

Nevermind.

She takes Peter by the wrist and drags him away, keeping an eye on her phone all the time. She will be damned if they get marked tardy after. All of. Fucking. That.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peter @ Stiles, pretty much constantly: *heart eyes*  
> also Peter: *is a teenager and talks like he's some dapper gentleman in a black and white movie, the freaking weirdo*
> 
> _soulhugs~_


End file.
